African American Vikings – “Last month, Google’s generative AI tool Gemini made headlines after users reported that its depiction of historical figures was inaccurate.” Our Disturbing AI Future: Google Gemini Said What About Hitler? (Intellectual Takeout)
Synodal Confusion Continues “Remarks by Cardinal Mario Grech and Bishop Kevin Rhoades at a Notre Dame conference this week underscored that while some are focused on the ‘how’ of synodality, others are still concerned about its ‘what.’” Synod on Synodality Still Dogged by Concerns About Ambiguities — Even as Organizers Gear Up for Implementation (National Catholic Register)
Disfavored Informational Sources – “Artificial intelligence censorship tools are making sure you never read this article or share it with anyone it might persuade.” AI Censorship Targets People Who Read Primary Sources To Fact-Check The News (The Federalist)
The Christian Vision – “The challenges of everyone in our society are near to my heart and the hearts of all the Catholic faithful in the Archdiocese of Detroit.” The Good News About God’s Plan: A Pastoral Letter on the Challenges of Gender Identity (Archdiocese of Detroit)
A Sane Human Recognition – “Unlike most religious and philosophical systems, Christianity, like Judaism before it, recognizes that God works in history, which is to say, time and space – that time and space are, therefore, fundamentally sacred, not secular.” History, Sacred and Not (The Catholic Thing)
The Ivy League: Where Debate Goes to Die – “The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.” Harvard Tramples the Truth (City Journal)
Contemporary Poetry – “Essays posing as obituaries for modern poetry have become so numerous and have appeared over so many decades that they practically constitute a special department of literary criticism.” The Patient on the Table: On the Somewhat Exaggerated Death of Poetry (The European Conservative)
Theologian from Exile – “St. Vincent of Lérins was not always a shadowy figure. When his major work was re-discovered in the sixteenth century (having been lost for a millennium), Vincent was frequently cited by both Catholic and Protestant theologians.” The Pope’s Favorite Theologian (First Things)
Falling to Heaven – “Every wound on his body was caused by our sins and so they are revealed to us on the cross. By contemplating Jesus there, we are healed spiritually since we see not simply our sins but, much more, the love of Jesus for us.” Like Moses and the bronze serpent, we must take heed of the cross and contemplate what kills us: sin (Catholic Herald)
Intelligent Life Beyond Earth? – “Are we, on Earth, the lone intelligent inhabitants of this vast universe? The Catholic tradition teaches us that there are other rational creatures, namely angels, who are purely intellectual, non-physical beings. But do we humans share the cosmos with any other embodied intelligent forms of life?” A Very Short Introduction to the History of Catholic Debates About the Multiverse and Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Church Life Journal)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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The counterpart to “sacred” is “profane”, not “secular”.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
@ Disfavored Informational Sources
Joy Pullmann the Federalist details a disheartening if not alarming picture of high tech AI information management by federal agencies including defense. It has long been known that Microsoft and other media giants allied with federal agencies are managing or selecting what we read and hear. The obvious purpose, to control knowledge, behavior, and accrue total power.
Reliable sources are no longer reliable sources, except for the perennial liars who manipulate what the famous ‘they’ want us to know and react to. They are now identified as the Left power entrenched conglomerate attempting to control your mind. Sounds like what paranoid crazies would say a couple of decades ago that unfortunately has come to pass. From Ms Pullmann’s research, [one begins to wonder whether the Federalist et al are themselves Leftist decoys in our strange new world] counting on revelationist Tucker Carlson, Freedom OnLine Director Mike Benz the November results are already a conclusion. It seems the term paranoid is slated to become indicative of normal rather than abnormal. It’s apparently going to require intelligence [one’s own] and faith to survive our AI universe.
Back in the good ol’ days, beer companies and car companies selected what we watch. Oh, wait — they still do.
If you’re a passive consumer, it doesn’t matter who is making the choice. The important thing is you have let SOMEONE else make the choice for you.
Yes. Deception has always existed. Although the human intellect, especially though not entirely when enhanced by the gifts of the Holy Spirit is creative in its apprehensive capacity, in that it can reach beyond given parameters.
Insofar as being duped by one’s passivity I recall with regret my own mistakes when given medical advice by physicians, not making further inquiry.
@ Theologian from Exile
Here adding more from Lerins:
“…it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing to another. The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import”…
“[….] the doctrine of the Christian religion should properly follow these laws of development, that is, by becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age. In ancient times our ancestors sowed the good seed in the harvest field of the Church. It would be very wrong and unfitting if we, their descendants, were to reap, not the genuine wheat of truth but the intrusive growth of error.
“On the contrary, what is right and fitting is this: there should be no inconsistency between first and last, but we should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching, so that when, in the course of time, those first sowings yield an increase it may flourish and be tended in our day also.”
(from the first instruction by Saint Vincent of Lerins, Liturgy of the Hours, Friday of the 27th week in Ordinary Times).
And, consistent with Lerins, we now have from Cardinal Newman the seven criteria in his “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine” (1985). Again, growth but not contradiction.
@ Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
As a digital non-entity amongst the cosmologists of history and of today, yours truly humbly proposes the following in response to the author’s incomplete section on “ETI, Original Sin, Incarnation, Redemption”…
(1) Have any possible and technologically advanced civilizations in the cosmos also been GIVEN, by the transcendent God, a very different washroom key—-for “wisdom” and for the Beatific Vision? Or, is there a glass-ceiling threshold for this favored kind of “intelligence,” gifted and governed more from above, than from below (the implied wrap-around “evolution” across the cosmos)? Analogous to the Chosen People amongst the Canaanites?
(2) How, exactly, might any implied cosmically-multiple polygenesis (multiple universes) square with terrestrial Original Sin (just a quaint local narrative?) plus the SINGULAR redemptive act of Christ—-a “person” both human and divine, fully both (!)—-on planet earth and Calvary? Is our familiar and universal capacity to sin (!) against God (!) a unique and more-than-technical endowment, inseparable from a freely given, alarming, and unique Redemption by the Triune Creator Himself (!)?
(3) Or, is any such Redemption multiple across space and time while still ONE ACTION (not mass produced or plurlist) just as every Mass around our small world is the unbloody renewal/extension of the SINGULAR self-donation on Calvary (not an “assembly”-line product) while also “numerically distinct”—within and by the one and indwelling Holy Spirit? Or, does the humility of God (!) expose Himself only “here” in backwater Jerusalem? Perhaps because none of those other hypothetical intelligences ever had the gifted freedom (!) and capacity to “fall,” because not created fully in the “image and likeness” of God?
(4) Or, instead and with Blessed Duns Scotus, might Christ have become incarnate here (and even elsewhere?) ABSENT our fallenness and particular need for salvation history, by an action of overflowing divine charity that includes, but is not limited to our terrestrial need for such damage control?
(5) Or, despite hypothetical technical superiority elsewhere, is our human access toward beatitude still a most singular gift into the cosmos—and into the LOGOS? What is “the world”? Pope Francis would readily baptize a Martian, he once said, but Pope St. John Paul II proposed a distinctive “ONTOLOGICAL LEAP” (sometimes fatally mistranslated [cross-dressed?] as only an “evolutionary” leap?):
“The moment of transition to the SPIRITUAL cannot be the object of this kind of observation [meaning the natural sciences], which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again of aesthetic and religious experience fall within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator’s plans” (“Message on Evolution to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.” Oct. 1996).
Just a few opening questions, here, about possible ETI—what it might be, and what it might not be. With Hamlet: “. . . to BE or not to BE, that is the question.”
@ Disfavored Informational Sources
As to mind control and fear the Christian has the advantage of God and his guidance through the Holy Spirit. In that sense the world could turn upsidedown and we would not be affected spiritually unless we permit it. Thus the Christian would perceive manifest right and wrong, if evil is camouflaged as good he’s not culpable if deceived. Although he would have the capacity to expose the charade of evil if not entirely by intellectual apprehension, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He would be the source of sanity in a world gone mad.
@ Intelligent Life Beyond Earth?
The following tidbit of evidence, uncited, among other similar uncorroborated quotes by popes and saints indicate the author, retired theologian Thigpen seeks to convince himself and us that his lofty imaginings are not simply plausible, but with so eminent a list of alleged supporters must be true:
“One prominent twentieth-century saint firmly agreed with that idea. The celebrated Italian Capuchin priest and friar St. Pio of Pietrelcino [1887–1968], more commonly known as Padre Pio, once insisted in private conversation that ‘other beings’ exist ‘who love the Lord’. The Lord certainly did not limit his glory to this small Earth. On other planets other beings exist who did not sin and fall as we did'”.
There is very good reason why theologian Thigpen’s “A Very Short Introduction to the History of Catholic Debates About the Multiverse and Extraterrestrial Intelligence” is very short. But of course nowadays we have the theology of a God who keeps secrets to later on reveal them to us as the God of surprises. Multiple creations of creatures made in God’s image [intelligence is the conduit].
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. And the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him. And that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that the darkness could not overcome.
Does John give us any sense that the Word created many worlds of men in his image, and that the unique miracle of divine love, the incarnation and revelation of God the Father in Christ was throughout the universe of other like creations a mere irregularity due to the accident of one man’s sin?